Hospitals in Pakistan have shut their gates and have put up signs reading ‘full house’. People infected with the coronavirus are being refused admittance. According to the NYT, the rates at which doctors and nurses are falling ill is frightening. It adds that medical staff are also being assaulted by frantic and enraged family members. Health care workers are referring patients to other hospitals knowing those will also not be able to admit them, because they fear being physically attacked by desperate families. Many hospitals are now preferring to hand over the bodies of coronavirus victims to their families, rather than facing the violence.

Pakistan had already warned, when it lifted its lockdown on May 9, that it could not manage a longer lockdown due to economic stressors. However, while Pakistan had recorded about 25,000 infections before it reopened, one month later, the country recorded a further 100,000 cases. True figures are expected to be higher. The virus is projected to peak in July or August. 900,000 people are expected to become infected, and there are fears the county’s health care system will collapse.

According to the NYT, the World Health Organisation on June 7, wrote a letter advising Pakistan to reimpose the lockdown. It added that Pakistan did not meet any of the criteria needed to lift the lockdown. The government was, however, adamant that a further lockdown was not possible. It remains confident it can deal with an increasingly perilous situation. Pakistan’s Health Minister, Dr Zafar Mirza, said, “We are a low middle-income country, with two-thirds of the population dependent on daily incomes.” He added, “We have to make tough policy choices to strike a balance between lives and livelihoods.” In Karachi, however, local health officials say only a third of the city’s 600 intensive care beds are available to treat coronavirus patients, in both it’s private and public hospitals. The city’s population stands at almost 20 million. Meanwhile, the WHO says there are just 751 ventilators available in a country of 200 million people.

Umm Muhammed Umar